I use a Snow Peak 900 pot with my bushbuddy ultra. After several trips I have a build up of "gunk" on the bottom of my pot. This is not just soot (see pic below). Aside from the fact that I would like to clean up my pot a little I am concerned that this gunk might be adding a fraction of an ounce to my pot weight. Also, sometimes the the bushbuddy pot stand piece sticks to my pot when I remove it from the stove.

I have been primarily using pine woods as fuel. Any ideas on how to remove this stuff from my pot?

> I have been primarily using pine woods as fuel. Any ideas on how to remove this stuff from my pot?
Pine resin, charred on. Yuk.
You could try a nasty hydrocarbon solvent – it might work but yukky to breathe.

You could try an LPG torch VERY CAREFULLY. The pine resin builds up because the pot never gets truly hot. No, 100 C is not 'hot'. Take the pot VERY CAREFULLY up to 200 C and a lot of that stuff will char and brush off. Take it too hot (which is very easy to do), and your Ti pot will get slightly (dis)coloured from the heat. But then, no harm is really done by the colour, and the pine char is already pretty horrible. The Ti can take a LOT of heat without damage.

An old, reliable trick is to soap the pot BEFORE you use it over wood. Just scrub it with a bar of Ivory until you build up a thin layer. Let it soot up on the trip, then wash it off when you get home.

Alternatively, leave the soot on. It marginally increases the efficiency of the heat transfer – like painting the pot flat black.

If you just have to get the pot clean, Brillo pads and elbow grease have always worked for me. Forget oven cleaner – it works by reacting with fat. The soot on the pot is carbon and creosote.

Sorry for bringing back a dead thread, but I found a solution and wanted to share. Take your pot that is charred with Creosote and place it in a dish with Denatured Alcohol (the stuff you use to run your small alcohol stoves). Wrap a paper towel around your pot and allow the paper towel to "wick" and absorb the liquid up the sides of the pot. Basically your trying to cover the bottom of the pot with liquid as well as the sides, pretty easy and you don't have to waste too much fuel.

I let it sit overnight and when I woke up, it all came of with a sponge and dish-soap without any scrubbing. My pot looks new. I have been reading all the different ways and this is the final solution for me. Now I can go use my DIY Bushbuddy and enjoy life. Creosote is not as bad as I thought it would be.

One of the reasons I hate cooking with wood. When I was young I cooked exclusively with wood fires. I found the best method was to wash the outside of the pot after each meal (when possible) with wet sand. This way you got ahead to the build up and no chemicals were involved. Also try to stay away with wood with a high resin content (even though it has higher BTUs).

I agree with Ike,
I cook exclusively with wood fires when it's permitted and I find that it's best to just give in to the creosote build up. Save your sanity and don't worry about it IMO (and store your pot in a dedicated stuff sack that you don't care about so you never have to clean the pot's exterior if you don't want to).

Yes, you are adding fractions of an ounce with the creosote, but your pot is also getting more efficient from the improved heat absorption of the black coating. My guess is that sooner or later you are going to come to the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort to keep the outside of your wood fire pot clear of creosote, so I'd recommend just doing yourself a favor and giving in right from the get go ;-)